More about the Panel:

• Supports better access to data for research across the UK using the Digital Economy Act’s research framework, enabling the production of statistics and research for the public good;
• Contributes to wider strategic discussions on enabling and improving research access to de-identified administrative and survey data owned by multiple public authorities;
• Assesses research project applications requesting access to de-identified public authority data for the purposes of public good research to ensure that projects are of public benefit, demonstrate analytical merit and have considered the ethical implications of the research;
• Provides the governance of the accreditation of researchers who wish to use the Digital Economy Act 2017 to access de-identified public authority data; and
• Oversees the accreditation of processing environments that prepare and/or provide access to data available under the Digital Economy Act 2017, including providing scrutiny of the security standards, policies and procedures that processors must comply with to become Accredited Processors.

We are seeking candidates with an interest in enabling access to data safely, securely and ethically. This could include experience in one or more of the following fields:

• Social research
• Economic research
• Data science
• Data linkage
• Data protection
• Data ethics
• Data security

The UK Statistics Authority is an independent body at arm’s length from government. The Authority has a statutory objective of promoting and safeguarding the production and publication of official statistics that ‘serve the public good’. The public good includes:

• informing the public about social and economic matters;
• assisting in the development and evaluation of public policy; and
• regulating quality and publicly challenging the misuse of statistics

The collective mission of the official statistics system is to provide high quality data and analysis to inform the UK, improve lives and build the future. Our remit covers the three principal elements of the UK official statistics system:

• the Government Statistical Service (GSS), which is the cross-government community of all those involved in the production of official statistics in the UK;
• the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority and the largest producer of official statistics in the UK;
• the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) which is the regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority. It assesses official statistics for compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics, reports on system-wide issues and on how statistics are used, celebrating when the standards are upheld and challenging publicly when they are not.